Wuthering Heights (2011) Blu-Ray Artificial Eye

Emily Bronte's celebrated 1847 novel has been adapted time and again by world cinema, with each production embracing the squeeze of unrequited love and the abundant atmospheric trimmings of the original work. It’s a timeless tale of obsession, yet this latest take on the material takes matters into a harsher direction of internalized agony and violent communication.

In Arnold's version, Heathcliff (played as a boy by Solomon Glave and in adulthood by James Howson) is a black runaway, plucked off the streets of Liverpool and raised on a north country hill farm. As youngsters, Heathcliff and Cathy (played first by Shannon Beer and then by Kaya Scoledario) exist in a kind of primitive Eden where they are neither quite siblings or lovers but some innocent hybrid of the two. It cannot last. Cathy is parcelled off to the local manor house where she reluctantly agrees to marry the foppish, insubstantial Edgar Linton (James Northcote). Heathcliff, meanwhile, is first abused and then later cast out by his brutish adoptive brother. He returns wealthy and hardened, hell-bent on revenge and still longing for Cathy.